


Take My Card

by ZombieBabs



Series: Breaking & Entering [1]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Drunkenness, First Meetings, Gen, Headcanon, Underage Drinking, troubled youth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 01:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7554925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZombieBabs/pseuds/ZombieBabs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby Carver takes a stupid bet to break into The Strand Institute and steal something as proof. She meets Dr. Richard Strand, Strand Institute President & Founder. She's never been given permission to rob someone before. And she certainly never expected to be offered a job afterward.</p><p>*Updated 6.05.17</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take My Card

Carver never expected the dare to go so easy. She expected more security, for one. Alarms maybe. But she's able to pick the lock on the front door without interruption. No alarms sound when she ducks inside. This time at night, no one roams the hallways. No Rent-A Cops, no employees working late into the night, no cleaning staff roaming the halls with their supply carts. The place is deserted.

She has to admit, it’s actually kind of boring. The thrill of breaking into the place has already receded, the adrenaline high nowhere near even a buzz. She thinks, several times, about trashing the place. Instead, she pulls her hat low and continues on. She can make up a story later, about dodging guard dogs and sneaking past security cameras. Her friends were too chickenshit to tag along--it's not like any of them can disprove her version of events. They'll probably be too drunk to ask questions anyway. They're probably back at Mike's place, already hammered on the watered down beer Mike sneaks away from his dad.

She wanders through the halls, looking into offices as she goes. She's supposed to steal something, anything really, just to prove she was inside. But what fun is it to take a stapler or nameplate off of some employee's desk? Where is the challenge?

Might as well up the ante. Hit the guy at the top. He's probably got some expensive pens, maybe a watch, laying around the office like so much clutter. He's probably got something worth selling. She might as well get something to make taking the dare worthwhile. Maybe slip the money into her mom's wallet while she's sleeping.

Carver might be a 'troubled youth,' as her guidance counselor once called her, but at least she isn't a shitty troubled youth.

The elevator ride up is smooth, so much smoother than the elevator back at the apartment. She bets it never breaks down. And if it does, it’s probably fixed in a couple of hours. Probably the only time anyone enters a stairwell is to take a smoke break. It even makes a cheerful _ding!_ when the elevator doors slide open.

Carver waits a long moment, but there's no sign of life on this floor either. Before she can let herself think any further about what she's doing, she jumps out of the elevator before the doors can shut. She's already come this far. No turning back now.

She finds an office with a door like something she’d expect to find in a detective comic--the window is all frosted glass with the name _Dr. Richard Strand, Strand Institute President & Founder_ etched into the glass. She pulls at the handle to find it unlocked. Guy with a title like his probably never thinks to lock it. Probably never thought someone would dare enter his office without permission. All the better for Carver.

The lights are off, but the city lights just beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows makes it easy enough to see. The office of Dr. Richard Strand, Strand Institute President & Founder, is large, almost twice the size of her bedroom. Bookshelves, lots of bookshelves, line the walls. The desk is back near the far wall, two chairs pushed in front of it, presumably for guests. It’s everything she imagined a boss’s office to look like.

And also not.

A body lies sprawled out on the floor, face up.

“Jesus Christ!” she curses, crossing herself like she’s seen her mother do thousands of times before.

The body moves, head lolling back to look at her. Carver breathes out in relief. Even if it means she’s effectively been caught. At least she won’t have to pick her way around a dead guy.

“Who are you?” The man’s voice is just on the edge of slurring. A bottle of whiskey sits at the man’s side, just within reach. Not a dead man, but a drunk. Her chances of escape triple. No way a guy this sloshed could chase her.

Even as she backs away, back toward the open door, the man’s head lolls away from her. One of his hands gives a dismissive wave before dropping to rest on his stomach. “Nevermind. Take what you came here for and get out.”

She’s never been given _permission_ to steal before. She peers into the darkness at the man, suspicious. It's a trap, gotta be. As far as she knows, she could be walking right into the office of a serial killer or something. The whole drunk thing could be an act. But he isn’t paying attention to her anymore. It's as if he’s totally dismissed her presence in favor of lying in a stupor in the middle of his floor. 

“Yo. Mister. You alright?”

He gives another halfhearted wave, as if his hand is too heavy and the effort of holding it up is too great. “Fine.”

She almost asks him if he’s sure. He doesn’t look fine, lying there on the floor like that, his suit rumpled. Her mother would be having a fit if it was Carver getting her street clothes dirty like that. But she isn’t her mother and he’s a grown-ass man who can probably afford the dry cleaning bill. She leaves him where he is.

The man’s eyes move to watch her whenever she comes into his field of vision, but he doesn’t say anything when Carver flips through the paperwork on his desk. Neither does he say anything when she thumbs along the books in the bookcases or when she opens the door to what she assumes must be a private bathroom. It isn’t a bathroom, but a storage closet. Carver flicks on the lights to find shelves of equipment, some of it strange looking and unfamiliar. Beyond several different cameras, compasses, and flashlights, Carver has no idea what she's looking at.

“What is this shit?” she asks, poking her head out of the closet.

“What ‘shit’?” the man asks. He puts a strange emphasis on the curse, as if the word is a jumble in his mouth.

Carver takes one of the contraptions from its shelf. She holds it over his face, watching as the bluest eyes she’s ever seen try to blink the gadget into focus. 

“EMF reader,” he says. As if she’s supposed to know what the hell that is. Seeing her frown, the man sighs and continues, “A device used to measure electromagnetic fields.”

She vaguely remembers hearing about electromagwhatsits in science class. She doesn’t understand why anyone would want to measure them, though. They’re just supposed to be _there_ , right? Frowning, she sets the meter down next to the bottle of whiskey at the man’s side and goes to retrieve another so-called device. It looks a little like the EMF reader, but different.

“This one?” she asks, holding it in his line of sight.

“Air quality monitor.”

“A what?”

“It’s used to assess levels of gasses present in the air. Like carbon monoxide.”

“Like from the stove?”

He laughs, a weird huff of breath, like even laughter is foreign to him. “Yes, like from the stove.” 

Carver narrows her eyes, trying to put together why one man would need to measure electromagnets and gasses in the air. She drops the device onto his unprotected stomach, laughing at the surprised _oof_ that escapes him as she goes back to the supply closet for another toy.

It’s a stick. Sort of. It looks sort of like the letter ‘L.’ “You can’t tell me this measures anything. There isn’t even a screen on it.”

“It doesn’t. It’s, ah, a dowsing rod.”

“Is that some kind of dirty sex thing?”

The color which rises in his cheeks is satisfying. Carver can’t help the teasing grin spreading across her own face. “I’m just messing with you. But seriously, what the hell's it for?”

“It’s for finding things.”

Carver hopes he can see how unimpressed her expression is in the dark. What does he take her for, an idiot? “Now you’re messing with me. How the hell is a stick supposed to help anyone find something? Unless it’s something way high up.” 

She stretches, holding the rod above her head, pantomiming pulling at something out of her reach.

“No, it--it’s difficult to explain.”

“Try me. I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He groans as he pushes himself up into a sitting position, swaying a little. He points at the closet without looking back at it. “Dowsing rods come in a pair. Get the other one and I’ll show you.”

Carver does as he says, handing both of the ‘L’ shapes to the man, now sitting cross-legged on the floor. 

“You hold them like so,” he says, demonstrating. “When you find what you’re looking for, they’re supposed to cross, like this.” He crosses them, one over the other, to form an ‘X’ in front of him.

“Do they actually work? For finding stuff?” Carver asks, taking the rods from him.

The man takes a swig from his bottle before answering. “Of course not.”

Carver’s brows furrow. Electromagnetics, air quality, sticks that don’t work. Who the hell is this guy? Why does he have such weird equipment? “Then why do you have them?”

“Because other people--I hesitate to call them my colleagues--believe they work.”

Carver crosses and uncrosses the rods. “Can I try?”

He does the dismissive wave thing again. Carver takes it to mean he doesn’t give two shits what she does.

“Do I close my eyes?”

“Only if you’d like to hurt yourself when you trip.”

Carver looks down at him, unsure if he’s just made a joke. He stares down at the bottle clutched in his hand and Carver shrugs. Not a joke then.

She holds the rods out like he showed her, feeling a little silly. But her only audience is a sad drunk who she’ll never see again. She walks, slowly, around the office. Is she supposed to feel something? Are the rods supposed to do all of the work for her? She goes for something between the two, walking in a direction that sort of feels right while waiting for the rods to do their thing and cross.

“What are you looking for?” the man asks.

“Dunno,” she says. “Something interesting, I guess.”

She circles the office twice before giving up. The rods refuse to cross, despite Carver spotting many things she would consider interesting. Carver tries not to be disappointed. He warned her they wouldn't work, after all. She drops them near the air quality monitor and the EMF thing. “Well, it’s been real.”

He looks up at her, surprised. “Much of this equipment is expensive. You aren’t going to take anything?”

Carver shrugs. “Naw. I wouldn’t even know what to do with it. I’m only up here for a stupid dare, anyhow. None of this proves I was even here, just that I found some weird-ass shit. Coulda got that anywhere.”

He’s silent for so long Carver starts to turn to leave, hands in her pockets. But then he says, “My desk. Take my card.”

Carver goes to his desk. It's a mess of paperwork, but a stack of business cards sit prominently in a holder at the front of the desk. She reaches out to take one. Her hand nudges a photograph and she stops, staring at it. In a black frame, a small family smiles at her. She recognizes the man currently on the floor, a woman, and a girl, maybe a little younger than Carver. A crack spider-webs across the glass, right across the man's face. 

She hesitates. Why isn't Dr. Richard Strand, Strand Institute President & Founder, at home with this family? Why is he still in his office on a Friday night, drinking himself stupid when he has a wife and daughter waiting for him? Why did he leave the glass half-shattered? Carver shakes her head. It’s none of her business. She takes one of the cards and shoves it into the pocket of her jeans.

“You sure you’re gonna be alright?” she asks.

He shakes his head, but contradicts himself when he says, “I'm fine.”

“Better not hear anything on the news about you jumping outta one of these windows,” she says, hands on her hips. Another mannerism she's picked up from her mother. “It’s a long way down.”

He huffs another one of those half-laughs. “You won’t.”

“Good.” 

Her hand is just reaching for the handle on the door when he stops her again. “An internship. Paid. If you're still looking for something interesting.”

“What?”

“I can pay you,” he reiterates, as if that’s the part she’s questioning and not everything else about the statement. She still doesn’t know who he is or what he does. Why would he even want her? She broke in and tried to rob him.

“Yeah, you said that. Why?”

“My last assistant didn’t work out. Come by on Monday. After school. We can work something out part-time.”

She still doesn’t understand, but she shrugs and says, “Sure.”

She has no intention of going back.

He lets her go, still sitting on the floor in a pile of sadness.

His card burns in her pocket all the way down the elevator. She’s aware of it all the way back to Mike’s place. She makes up an excuse about not finding anything worth taking. She complains she could have gotten arrested over a bunch of staplers and shit, all for a stupid dare. She laughs along with her friends and takes a congratulatory beer from Mike. 

She doesn’t tell anyone she met Dr. Richard Strand, Strand Institute President and Founder. She's not sure why.

It isn’t until later, when she’s sitting with a beer half-forgotten at her feet, staring down at the business card in her hands, she knows that come Monday, she’ll go back.

He promised her something interesting, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> *Edited 6.05.17


End file.
